JOHN AND PATSY RAMSEY DISCUSS WHO THEY THINK MIGHT BE
RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR DAUGHTER JONBENET'S DEATH

NBC News Transcripts, March 23, 2000

KATIE COURIC reporting:

In part four of our interview with the parents of JonBenet Ramsey, where are they today
after three years under an umbrella of suspicion? John and Patsy Ramsey have been
hounded by the press and investigated by a grand jury. Now they're trying to put their
lives back together. I think the only entity that you all hate as much as the Boulder police
is the press. Tell me about the lengths that people in my business went to to get at you.

Ms. PATSY RAMSEY: They stole our trash. They hid in trees and shrubbery.

Mr. JOHN RAMSEY: We've been followed to Europe.

COURIC: Someone came to your church, I understand, saying they wanted to...

Mr. RAMSEY: We--we apparently...

COURIC: ...convert to Christianity?

Mr. RAMSEY: We apparently filled the church every Sunday. It was largely the tabloid
media is what we finally figured out.

Ms. RAMSEY: All of those writers must have gotten straight A's in creative writing is all I
can figure, because they're very creative.

COURIC: In other words, much of what was printed about you was just completely and
utterly fabricated?

Mr. RAMSEY: Utterly. All of it was false.

COURIC: You talk about the tabloids.

Mr. RAMSEY: So you only have a few of them, I see.

COURIC: You on the front page.

Ms. RAMSEY: Mm-hmm.

Mr. RAMSEY: Yes.

COURIC: (Reading) "JonBenet, Mom did it alone. She killed little beauty for wetting her
bed."

Ms. RAMSEY: Mm-hmm.

COURIC: "JonBenet rape shocker." What was it like seeing these headlines week after
week, or did you see them?

Mr. RAMSEY: You--you can't avoid them. They're in the supermarkets, they're in the
drugstores. This was the same kind of magazine that--that, you know, a few years ago
was publishing, you know, 'Two-headed alien born in Oklahoma.' And I used to look at
them and think, 'Oh, I wonder--nah, probably not.' And now they've--they've focused
on--on my family. And I can't help but think that most of the people that walk by these
things look at that and say, 'Hm, I wonder.'

Ms. RAMSEY: Mm-hmm.

COURIC: I think they do.

Mr. RAMSEY: And I think they do, too.

Ms. RAMSEY: The media is so powerful. They can--can formulate public opinion in this
country. They say, 'Looking for pornography.' They don't say, 'Didn't find any.' They say,
'Looking for previous sexual abuse.' They don't report, 'Never found any,' you know. All of
it is so insinuating.

COURIC: You all write about so-called urban legends that have circulated, false
information or false impressions that...

Ms. RAMSEY: Mm-hmm.

COURIC: Sort of added up to give the overall feeling that you...

Mr. RAMSEY: Mm-hmm.

COURIC: ...were guilty.

Ms. RAMSEY: Were guilty, right.

COURIC: For example, it could not have been an intruder because there were no
footprints in the snow.

Mr. RAMSEY: The fact of the matter is, I've seen photos that were taken early that
morning by the police. There was--there were patches of snow, but there were lots of
clear space, particularly on the patio that is--is adjacent to the basement window.

COURIC: You left the house for a time that morning.

Mr. RAMSEY: I left the house for probably five seconds. I went out on the patio. I went
around to the--we had another exterior garage door. I wanted to see if it was locked.

COURIC: That one January morning when cameras caught you all coming out of church,
down the aisle with members of the congregation...

Mr. RAMSEY: Mm-hmm.

COURIC: ...who had gathered, that you had set the whole thing up, it was a publicity
stunt.

Mr. RAMSEY: We were accused of that. The fact of the matter was that our minister at
the service said, 'Look, this is what's going to happen. There's going to be a lot of
cameras out there. But I'm going to change the rules. I want all of you who are supporting
the Ramseys to line up along the sidewalk and show the world that we support them.'
And everybody did. It was wonderful.

COURIC: You were unemotional...

Mr. RAMSEY: When?

COURIC: ...in general. People interpreted your behavior as unemotional or somehow
inappropriate or not proper in terms of how one should behave if one is grieving.

Mr. RAMSEY: Well, I've grieved for the loss of two children. I've grieved for the loss of my
parents. If you want to see me grieve, I'll call you some--some evening at three in the
morning when I've woken up and I've had this stark image of my daughter when I found
her. You'll see me grieve.

COURIC: When we come back, the Ramseys talk of how they were prepared to be
indicted. That's after this. ***

COURIC: Back now with more of our interview with John and Patsy Ramsey. They claim
that from the beginning, the police jumped to conclusions about who killed their
daughter, and the public was impatient. Following JonBenet's murder on December
26th, 1996, the Ramsey case dragged on and on. Nearly two years of police
investigation and no arrests. In September of 1998, the Boulder district attorney's office
submitted the case to a grand jury. After 13 months, an indictment seemed imminent.
But this was the result. Unidentified Man: The Boulder grand jury has completed its work
and will not return. No charges have been filed.

COURIC: No indictment against John and Patsy Ramsey. The news was a shock to
everyone, including the Ramseys themselves. You all were so convinced that you were
going to be indicted that you actually went to Boulder prepared to turn yourselves in to
authorities.

Mr. JOHN RAMSEY: We were convinced that the system hadn't worked for
three years, and why should we expect it to work now? We had no fear of a trial. We had
no doubt about the outcome of a trial. None.

COURIC: Given you had no doubt, do you ever wish there had been a trial?

Mr. RAMSEY: We've talked about that often. We've said...

Ms. RAMSEY: There--there are some good--there are some benefits to that, because
we would have been able to obtain all of the evidence. Every...

Mr. RAMSEY: We've had the worst so far. We've been--we have never been officially
named as suspects by the Boulder police. We've--we've been...

Ms. RAMSEY: Under the umbrella...

Mr. RAMSEY: Under the umbrella of suspicion.

Ms. RAMSEY: ...of suspicion.

Mr. RAMSEY: But yet we've been tried, convicted, and probably in some people's
minds, executed in the public court.

Ms. RAMSEY: Without the benefit of the trial.

COURIC: Some people believe that because the grand jury failed to indict you, it doesn't
mean that they exonerated you, that it could have been simply there was not enough
evidence to indict, but that doesn't mean you are innocent.

Mr. RAMSEY: You know how much evidence it takes to indict on probable cause at a
grand jury? It's about that much. And it takes about that much to convict.

COURIC: Following the grand jury's conclusion, Colorado Governor Bill Owens spoke
pointedly about the, quote, "killers" of JonBenet Ramsey. Governor BILL OWENS: The
killers in this case made some very serious mistakes. But they're also very smart. They
have stonewalled effectively, and they've covered their tracks well.

COURIC: The Ramseys say it was clear he was talking about them.

Mr. RAMSEY: It was horribly disappointing. Because what he needed to say, in our
minds, was, 'I'm going to find the killer of this child. We're going to put investigators on
this case that have homicide experience. We're going to continue with resources until
we find the killer.'

COURIC: You all must have been furious, more than just disappointed.

Ms. RAMSEY: We were amazed.

Mr. RAMSEY: It was shocking.

Ms. RAMSEY: I mean, isn't he stepping on the Constitution? Or am I reading things
wrong?

COURIC: After the grand jury's action, a poll showed that 49 percent of the country still
thought one of you was involved in your daughter's murder.

Mr. RAMSEY: I'm surprised it wasn't 100 percent. They've been told that for three years.

COURIC: It's amazing when you hear about polls or public opinion, that in general,
actually, completely, you've been treated with a great deal of--of respect and kindness
by strangers.

Mr. RAMSEY: We've been overwhelmed by the goodness that's come forward to us,
strangers that have come up to us and--we had two people on the way up for this
interview that stopped us in the airport. 'Aren't you JonBenet's parents?' I'm always
proud to say, 'Yes, I am.' And they said, 'Well, I just want you to know, I'm--I'm sorry for
what's happened to you.'

COURIC: And yet the Ramseys' relationship with one of their closest friends came to an
odd and troubling end. Let me ask you about your close friend Fleet White, because
that's one of these strange sort of areas in this case. You spent Christmas day together.
He was with you when you found JonBenet's body. And yet, just a week later, it was
reported that he got angry at you for hiring lawyers and not cooperating more with the
police, and you haven't spoken since. And, in fact, he's twice asked the governor's office
to appoint a--a special prosecutor to further investigate you. So a man who used to be
your best friend is behaving this way. What gives?

Mr. RAMSEY: The best that I can figure, and we know this has happened to other
people who've told us this, the police will go to our friends and say, 'Katie, the Ramseys
think you had something to do with the death of their daughter. Would you talk to us?' I
believe that they did that to Fleet White.

COURIC: It sounds at face value that he thinks you were involved.

Ms. RAMSEY: I don't know--we...

Mr. RAMSEY: I can't...

Ms. RAMSEY: We can't explain it.

Mr. RAMSEY: I can't accept that.

COURIC: Do you think he could have been involved in this at all?

Mr. RAMSEY: No, I don't.

Ms. RAMSEY: I don't believe that.

Mr. RAMSEY: They had a nice family. We spent lots of time together, our families did.

COURIC: Today the Ramseys are trying to rebuild their own family life in Atlanta, the
hometown they returned to in the spring of 1997. John's eldest son, John Andrew, was
dropped as a suspect in the case when he proved he'd been away the night JonBenet
was killed. Now he's finishing up a college history degree. His sister Melinda lives in
Virginia and is expecting a baby. The Boulder district attorney put a stop to tabloid
rumors by officially clearing Burke Ramsey as a suspect last May. Today, Burke is what
his parents call a typical 13-year-old. How is Burke doing through all this?

Ms. RAMSEY: What we worry about with Burke is down the road. You know, you just
don't know what kind of repercussions he may suffer from this long-term.

COURIC: Has he gotten professional help? Have you all gotten professional help to deal
with this?

Ms. RAMSEY: Oh, yes. Absolutely.

COURIC: What other residual effects have you all experienced from this ordeal?

Ms. RAMSEY: It--it was very painful to look at houses with a number of bedrooms,
because it brought home so painfully the fact that we needed fewer bedrooms now
since we no longer had two children.

COURIC: They're remodeling the house they eventually bought and making sure it
provides the sense of security they say their Boulder home failed to give.

Ms. RAMSEY: The whole upstairs hallway's about six feet by eight feet. It's nice because
it's small and you know where everything is. There are no hiding places. I didn't want any
more doors or windows than we absolutely had to have. And all the ones that we do
have will be fixed so they can't come open.

COURIC: Do you all have nightmares?

Mr. RAMSEY: Occasionally. Less now than I did.

COURIC: How are you all doing financially? John, you write about being fired by General
Electric, NBC's parent company, when your company was sold to GE.

Mr. RAMSEY: Mm-hmm.

COURIC: According to GE, the company has a policy of not commenting on personnel
matters. Are you working at all? Are you doing consulting work?

Mr. RAMSEY: The book--any of the profits from the book will go to the foundation that
we set up to honor JonBenet.

COURIC: What is that foundation, and what--what does it do?

Mr. RAMSEY: We want the foundation to focus on protecting America's children against
predators. I would like the murder of a child to be treated in this country as a federal
offense. But there's been over a thousand children murdered in their homes since
JonBenet was murdered, yet we don't know about it. We should, as a country, respond
to that the best that we can. We don't today.

COURIC: Tomorrow, as we conclude our interviews with the Ramseys, who they think
killed their daughter. We'll be right back.